Val Werier's June 30 article Winnipeg: one great parking lot was very unfair to Winnipeg drivers like myself. He writes: "The car is the biggest noisemaker and polluter."

I am unaware of the pollution statistics, but let me zoom by Werier in my 1998 Mazda Protégé, and then let a bus clunk and chug passed him next. I'd be interested to hear him explain to me how my vehicle is louder.

How can Mr. Werier say that the car has influenced the design of this city? Winnipeg is one of the most inconvenient cities to drive in. There isn't a single route in Winnipeg that is not constantly interrupted with traffic lights. Larger cities (like Toronto, for example) have freeways that allow people to travel across the entire city without interruption. With six lanes! If someone was designing our city to accommodate ease of car travel, they did a poor job.

As idealistic as creating a community where everything was in walking distance, it seems Mr. Werier also forgot that we live in Manitoba, where we spend all but four or five months of the year shivering in the snow and ice. I don't care if I could walk to the grocery store faster than I could drive: When there is a minus-50 degrees wind chill, I am going to be inside my car.

I drive every day, and it costs me $90 per month to park, plus the outrageous cost of gas. Would I rather spend only $70 to take the bus? Of course I would, but I would also have to consider the extra 30 minutes it would take me to get to my destination and back.

In a city where the bus lane is almost always used as a parking lane, where rapid transit is nowhere near reality and where every traffic route is constantly interrupted by stoplights, my time is more valuable than my money.

Maybe Mr. Werier should consider that car users are not in driving paradise here in Winnipeg. We aren't using our cars to aggravate pedestrians, quicken the demise of the environment or boycott the buses. We are trying to quietly get from Point A to Point B in a reasonable amount of time without freezing our limbs off.